Synagogue four-tracks, Big Mix cereal and Eskimo Snow

In anticipation (celebration?) of Bay Area-based band Why?'s brand new album Eskimo Snow, I've gathered a few quotes from my recent conversation with vocalist Yoni Wolf. The album, inside and out, is beautiful. Dreamy art pop sounds, detailed lyrics and prominent beats.

As the story goes, Wolf discovered his love for recording while futzing with a four-track in the basement of his Rabbi father's synagogue.

"I found the four-track in a closet in the synagogue – my dad showed me how to use it. I recorded some little tracks, messing around on there, some kind of rapping – my name was Big Mix after the cereal Big Mix. "

Musically, Wolf has been inspired by artists across the genre spectrum.

"I like Bob Dylan, his poetic stuff and some other music of that era – some [Pink] Floyd, I always liked how ethereal they sound. In high school I listened to East Coast Positive Hip Hop."

On his life as an artist/musician:

"Most of the art I make now becomes album art or t-shirt art, usually its not just art for art’s sake. I like the idea of being a utilitarian in a way. Making everything for the band."

On the possibility of other careers besides his current trajectory:

"I couldn’t work a second job, I am fully committed to music – maybe I'd be an astronaut?  I don’t know if I would though I’d like to go to space.  I’ve always been more about where I'm at now, I've had trouble seeing in to the future. "

Eskimo Snow drops tomorrow, Sept. 22 courtesy of Anticon.

Why? are set to perform Oct. 17 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

You can read up more on Wolf's Jewishness in a recent Jerusalem Post article posted here.

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